From Zacks: Effect of Sales Fees Although the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority limits the size of the sales loads to 8.5 percent, such fees have a negative compounded effect on the investor's return from the point of the initial investment. For example, a 5-percent front-end load for a $10,0...

It's worth remembering that failing to meet a safe harbor need not be a big deal. For example, let's suppose you're in the OP's shoes. A big, unanticipated $6,500 cap gain distribution occurs in December 2018. As a result, you pay an extra $1000 in estimated tax on 1/15/19 that you had not planned f...

To give one current example, take the new icon that links to your Personal Messages. I still have no idea what symbolism the author had in mind, and hovering gave no additional clue as to the function. If you were giving me a Rohrschach test, I'd say it's a head-on view of a car. So, when I post in...

She will research the issue and get back to me by phone today. She sounded sympathetic to my idea that some IRS clerk had entered our business income twice on form 1040. I always wondered whether the IRS reads paper forms with OCR (optical character recognition) or whether a human reads the forms a...

I just think symbols instead of words is moving in the wrong direction. People who are not accustomed to this don't know what to do. When you tell people to "edit", you also have to add "use the pencil thing" in case they don't know. Now we have a quote symbol instead of a word, color, url, etc. Ye...

Wealthfront is a robo-advisor that peddles TLH as a service. With VTEB and TFI listed as "primary" and "secondary", it looks like they do expect to TLH between these two. That has the potential to increase the entertainment value of tax filing for their shareholders, due to the rule about selling mu...

Now that I am done with all the seasons of Bosch, what next? Any suggestions for a quality show? Have watched all of Wallamder, and all of Luther. Would like a good show series that doesn't have too too many episodes overall as I do not want to start in on a 60 episode show. Try "The Killing" or "H...

But how about the timing of RMDs in a given year? Are you better off taking your distribution at the beginning of the year, or at the end? Or should you take them throughout the year, the better to fund living expenses and cover quarterly estimated taxes? Sigh. This is massively unimportant. Aside ...

As I recall, a cap loss on muni bond funds held less than 6 months is non-deductible so be careful if you TLH. Actually, the Bogleheads looked into this and we ultimately came to the conclusion that is not so! Truly one of the highlights of the forum. If your municipal bond fund is accruing interes...

Long-term capital gain distributions can be offset against any losses generated by a sale; short-term capital gain distributions cannot and must be counted as taxable income. If you have capital losses, can't short term losses or remaining long term losses be used to offset short term gains? And th...

...Make about $75k, mandatory 5% contrib from me but then they match 10% (so an extra $7k per year on the match). I also have a supplemental account I opened that I have tossed ~$2k in per year after I max my Roth out to further lower my tax burden a bit. I had a very similar plan for 40 years. Tha...

In case the horse hasn't been beaten to death yet... Interest payments, new contributions, and bonds sold before maturity are simply more fodder for the management of a fund. It all gets redeployed (net of expenses) one way or another. They don't literally set aside cash daily for accrual whether th...

Actually, if we treat 'cash' as T-bills, it can actually be a very effective asset. Historically, that's usually kept you about even with inflation or slightly better. Agree. Not sure if retail investors had easy access to T-bills in 1966 though. Not disagreeing just don't know. They seemed to all ...

As I recall, a cap loss on muni bond funds held less than 6 months is non-deductible so be careful if you TLH. Actually, the Bogleheads looked into this and we ultimately came to the conclusion that is not so! Truly one of the highlights of the forum. If your municipal bond fund is accruing interes...

NOTE: While the ideal option is probably invest all of my funds here in low ER SP500 fund and then use my Roth at Schwab for small caps, intl, bonds, etc., I'm trying to keep every account equally diversified for the time being until I figure out my current/next job situation. I don't see much poin...

I recently sold some COLTX - Columbia Tax Exempt Fund for a loss If you're running short on things to worry about :twisted:, here's something: If any of your shares of COLTX sold at a loss were held for 6 months or less, then the loss you can claim might be reduced. It depends on how the fund manag...

Help me to understand Muni Bonds and taxes. So when you put money into say a state specific CA Tax Exempt Muni Bond fund via a taxable account. You pay neither Federal nor State taxes on the income, correct? But when you withdraw the money from the fund you will have to pay capital gains taxes eith...

OK. It appears that Yahoo Finance has restored the availability of adjusted closing prices. So I downloaded monthly data (first trading day of each month) for the entire history of three funds: VTSMX = Total Stock Market VEXMX = Extended Markets Index (effectively a Mid Cap Blend Index) VISVX = Smal...

IMO it's not a good idea to think that because you have (say) 10% allocated to a TIPS fund, you now are protected from inflation. What you have instead is a portfolio slice that will react to market conditions (especially unexpected inflation) in ways different from the way your other bonds react. ...

I think something even better than a "Growth of $10,000" chart would be a "Cost of $100,000" chart. Would love to see that be a clickable option at morningstar (or even better, the default). The right hand endpoint of such a chart would be today's date (or whatever endpoint is selected), with a val...

I read yesterday that Warren Buffett has now in cash $ 100,000,000,000. Berkshire Hathaway has $100M in cash ... not Buffet. Not the same thing. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-08-07/buffett-nears-a-milestone-he-doesn-t-want-100-billion-in-cash I hate to break it to everyone in this th...

BTW, I noted something in the BH Wiki (Capital Gains Distribution) that seems to give an incorrect impression. It states that the long-term CG rate is 0% for those in the 10% or 15% ordinary income bracket. Actually the only part of the long-term CG that is taxed at 0% is any difference between ord...

^As long as the ER is very low, I don't have a problem with owning an actively managed fund in a tax-advantaged account where distributions are not taxable events. I definitely don't think trading in and out of TIPS or a TIPS fund is a good idea for individual investors unless they are willing and a...

It's not an index fund. On the other hand, there's only so much active management one can do when you are (mostly) trading in only one type of US Gov. Security. For example, In light of these market crosscurrents, and based on our expectation of a rise in inflation and interest rates, we continue to...

siamond, Slightly OT, but let me put in a plug for an improved approach to charting. I've proposed it a couple of times before in old threads about charts and garnered absolutely no response.... The first iteration of the idea is that one should replace "Growth of $10,000" charts with "Cost of $100,...

and the holding period is altered to match the holding period of the shares sold. So, if you harvest Long Term Losses and then trigger a wash sale, those wash sale shares (after the price adjustment) would automatically be adjusted to Long Term Gains? Yup, once you sell them. Ain't our tax code mar...

Regarding your specific situation, the top of the 25% tax bracket in 2017 is $153,100 in taxable income. That is about $20,000 less than the gross income amount if you are taking a standard deduction. So you do have some headroom, not much, to do Roth conversions and stay with the same tax bracket....

Yes, I hesitated to even say TLH, because I think that my confusion was (and still is) in something even more basic: Can a wash sale completely disallow me from netting my gains against my losses on the Schedule D? If so, what happens to those losses? If a partial wash sale does occur for some reas...

I am willing to change my habits, and would be interested to hear your suggestions. My overall portfolio (no longer theoretical) currently consists of a 3-fund portfolio laid out over a rollover traditional IRA (Total Stock, Total International, and Total Bond) and taxable account (Total Stock and ...

I've decided to track my funds investments using a simple spreadsheet. Shall I add the specific ID to the spreadsheet, quick look on transaction history at Vanguard didn't show any "specificID" info, or is it just the settlement date as the identifier. The default at Vanguard is to use Av...

I would simply like to offset ST capital gains with ST capital losses in a taxable account. Note that if you have realized ST gains (and nothing LT), you can cancel them out with LT losses. Theoretical example (because we are trying to keep it simple here): I have positions of VTSAX in my IRA and i...

I have a small balance in my Federal MM settlement fund from dividends a month ago. I want to put $1000 with it to make an additional purchase of VTSAX. So I set up a transaction to move the $1000 into Federal MM. Then tomorrow I'll go back and move the entire MM amount into VTSAX. Would be nice if...

.At age 90 we would still have about half our IRAs with a 3 to 4 pct return over 20 years. How much inflation are you planning on? With 2.5% inflation, growth rates of 3% to 4% are 0.5% to 1.5% real. With a constant growth rate of 1% real, your RMDs will start to decrease in real terms at approx ag...

Can you guesstimate adjusted gross income from a leave and earning statement? What happens if we are investing in our ROTH IRA and our MAGI turns out to be more than $186k? You should be able to do a transfer of funds (direct assets, no selling/buying needed) from a Roth to a non-deductible IRA pre...

I guess my thinking was more along the lines of the advantages of insurance and possibly custodianship, e.g. in what circumstances would it be SIPC coverage be of benefit for mutual fund owners? SIPC insurance for your Vanguard mutual funds is not a compelling reason to upgrade. In my non expert op...

I agree with livesoft that this is one of the primary reasons one should tax loss harvest. (And of course, use Spec ID.) With enough banked losses, you can be indifferent to ST vs LT and simply sell the shares with the least gains. Without that, a typical dilemma might be $3000 LT gains vs. $2000 ST...

Real Estate, as a sector, is more than just REIT. I took a quick look at the holdings. They do have a YUUGE position in VNQ (their REIT index). It's $175M or 3.3% of assets--the largest single position out of 595. The 2nd largest holding is $27M. The next security with REIT in the title, a health ca...

One can calculate the RMD on the balance if it has declined throughout the year, per the date of the distribution? I think you are misinterpreting DetroitRick's point. What he's saying is that if the previous year balance is 100, and the calculated RMD is 10, then you must withdraw 10 OR THE ENTIRE...

^It is interesting that a new fund can be more tax-efficient, since gathering assets at a high rate can result in effectively lower dividend yields compared to an identically invested fund closer to equilibrium. This is possible even if the fund has been open for more than a full calendar year. I co...

Given sufficient wages to max out a 401(k) and IRA it doesn't require all that much imagination to see how one might accumulate $1M in tax-advantaged accounts. While it does require wages well above the median, it is nowhere close to requiring membership in the 1%. It also requires time. Indeed, ech...

JayZ, The way I prefer to describe TLH it is that if you have positions in Fund X with losses big enough to be worth taking, exchange them for shares of similar-but-different Fund Y. End of story. There is no step 2. Yes, #1 and #2 are clearly inferior. But they keep coming up as newbie proposals, b...

So I'm considering shifting most of my overall International shares into Taxable. [Reason: Total International gives Foreign Tax Credits so it's better for me to hold in taxable.] 1. You may get the foreign tax credit, but you'll also get more non-qualified (higher taxed) dividends. As a result, un...

Why would you think a **recommended financial advisor** would know anything close to what the collective wisdom on this here board can impart? It's not always about who knows more (and if it's Bogleheads collectively vs. any one financial planner, it's not a contest). IMO the main weakness here is ...

For example, if you are 65yo and choose a single-life annuity with 10 year guaranteed period, the current payout rates for annuitizing TIAA Traditional today are 6.2%, 6.0%, 6.3%, 7.0%, 8.4%, depending on the vintage. The 8.4% rate is for contributions prior to 2000. TIAA has its own vocabulary, wi...

^FWIW, when I wrote "has to be reported" that may be an overstatement. Based on what I've seen when people mess up a Backdoor Roth, I don't think the IRS has any issue with a trad IRA contribution that isn't reported on an 8606 or taken as a deduction. However, once the money is distribute...